Each of the above statements applies well enough to my own convictions as a creative thinker and very precisely to the newest installment of genesis pages for the Guerrilla Decontextualization project. It is titled Abbreviated Mind Syndrome, and yes, it does encourage readers to wade into some fairly deep waters of reflective considerations. But hey, when it comes to living a life devoted to constructing organic meaning and functional perspective out of language, there are few roles to which committed wordsmiths do not give themselves. That of the poet, social critic, fictionist, essayist, playwright, historian, journalist, and lecturer may all at some point place a hat of responsibility upon our pensive brows. For me, the launch of the Guerrilla Decontextualization initiative in 2012 served as an introduction to territories occupied by linguists, philosophers, and social critics. I make no claims to possessing the finely-honed tools which the more outstanding names in these fields have mastered. What I do possess are the restless curiosities they inspired and a lifelong interactive relationship with literature.

Digitized Intimacy

The phrase abbreviated mind might at first lead you think it refers to the modern practice of shortening words and statements to accommodate such technology-driven forms of communication as tweets and instant messaging. These practices can contribute to the cultivation of an abbreviated mind but the new essay series identifies a greater range of causes, effects, and consequences. (Current plans are to take the exploration much further in the proposed book on Guerrilla Decontextualization.) For those who appreciate such digitized intimacy, technology’s ability to allow people to enjoy a sense of constant connectedness is one of its most rightly-celebrated advantages. It enables family members, friends, and an extended network of tagged associates to share experiences of the moment––even if the sharing is sometimes a little too hasty and can’t be withdrawn.

“Human beings, in a sense, may be thought of as multidimensional creatures composed of such poetic considerations as the individual need for self-realization, subdued passions for overwhelming beauty, and a hunger for meaning beyond the flavors that enter and exit the physical body.”--Aberjhani from essay Creative Flexibility and Annihilated Lives

For poets who are not preparing to step up to a microphone or sit down to chat with Oprah Winfrey (in front of TV cameras no less!) about the endless joys of World Poetry Day and National Poetry Month, participating in an interview with the editors of Poetry Life and Times just might be the next best thing. Therefore, I consider myself fortunate to have done exactly that:Poetry Life and Times Interview with Author-Poet Aberjhani Most working-scribe authors (like me) find more comfort in asking interview questions than answering them. The fact is, however, switching interview roles is one of the best ways for a wordsmith to reflect on the validity of work already accomplished and to clarify emerging perspectives on pages in progress. The former strengthens one’s resolve to remain true to previously-confirmed literary purposes while the latter supplies intensified motivation for the labors at hand. With this Q&A, thanks to editor Sara Russell’s perceptive reading of my verse, I was able to expand my understanding of the experience that created the Songs of the Angelic Gaze series. Translator Robin Ouzman Hislop’s queries prompted me to confront technical and philosophical aspects of poetry that I may have started to take for granted and likely needed to give more conscious consideration. Because I am a multi-genre author, the interview experience was especially important at this very poetic time. Namely, it performs two noteworthy duties: the first is that of identifying the extraordinary positions of grace, knowledge, and power that poetry has come to occupy in my existence. And the second is that of respectfully acknowledging it, poetry, as a shaper of immensely significant meanings and contexts on this journey called life. Aberjhani

Unlike her fellow author Harper Lee, Toni Morrison has remained astonishingly prolific throughout her literary career. Though mostly celebrated as a creator of highly-inventive and intensely provocative fiction, she is also in fact an author of popular children’s books, intriguing opera librettos, and intellectually-probing nonfiction as well as an editor. Following the announcement of her forthcoming eleventh novel, God Help the Child, the February 9, 2015, edition of The New Yorker Magazine published “New Fiction” by her in form of an excerpt from the novel.

[If you missed the first part of this article and would prefer to start at the beginning please click here]

Although deeply embedded in African-American history, Morrison's writings have always gone beyond standard representations of African Americans as victimized or marginalized individuals drifting along the outskirts of white concerns. She has instead presented them as central cosmic presences wading their way through currents of unique human experience shaped by powerful confluences of historical developments. As an author, Toni Morrison in some important ways is to American fiction what the late W.E.B. Du Bois and Howard Zinn were to American history: a revisionist of themes and texts who expanded narratives on the American story to validate the testimonies of those whose lives and voices had been classified as “minor.”

The Color of a Mother's Pain

The passage from God Help the Child published in The New Yorker focuses on the development of the relationship between a very light-complexioned black woman and a daughter who, unexpectedly and inexplicably, is born with very dark skin. The child’s skin is so dark, in fact, that the mother holds a blanket over her face and then has to resist the urge to kill her. She later instructs her daughter to address her as “Sweetness,” and the daughter herself is given the far less elegant name of “Lula Ann” Bridewell. In addition to suffering painful embarrassment over her daughter’s complexion, Sweetness also fears for her safety in the world:“With that skin, there was no point in being tough or sassy, even when you were right. Not in a world where you could be sent to a juvenile lockup for talking back or fighting in school, a world where you’d be the last one hired and the first one fired. She didn’t know any of that or how her black skin would scare white people or make them laugh and try to trick her.” (Toni Morrison, from Sweetness as published in The New Yorker) This predicament allows Morrison to examine the often controversial subject of intra-racial color prejudice among African Americans. Some have theorized that such prejudice has its roots in the internalization of negative images projected by American Whites during slavery––and through mass media in the decades that followed–– onto African Americans. It further intensified into a form of self-hatred frequently reinforced by stereotypes proliferated throughout what passed for popular American culture in the 1900s. Others contend it is a completely different species of neuroses formed from the triple pressures of social, economic, and political oppression. Either way, intra-racial color prejudice represents yet one more facet of the bizarre negative psychological complexities generated by obsessions with notions of racial superiority in contrast to principles of human diversity.

A Framework for Millennials

Many television viewers were delightfully stunned by Toni Morrison during her appearance on the Stephen Colbert Show last November when she commented candidly on race as a “social construction” from which certain people profited. With those comments, as she has done for her own generation and the generations of American writers who have followed in her footsteps, she gave Millennials a very valuable tool in the form of one model for addressing one of the world’s most persistent problems: racism. The day after Morrison’s appearance on the late night talk show, readers born long after the publication of her first novel, The Bluest Eye in 1970, and many born not-so-long afterwards, took to social media to express how much they had enjoyed watching her. Many also, however, confessed that they had never read any of her books. Anyone in need of incentive to get started reading Morrison might consider that, as nearly as anyone can tell her works have been translated into nearly two dozen languages, is taught in schools around the world, and has sold in huge quantities for which there are no precise figures. That kind of achievement––even without mentioning such honors as the Pulitzer Prize, France’s Legion of Honour Award, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom–– is its own greatest endorsement. by Aberjhani